These little goodies are a delicious to look at and delight the palate! We make ours using a silicone mould, delivering cookies measuring 5cm in diameter. They are perfect little companions to afternoon coffee or tea. But we must admit that a tray of these doesn’t last us more than 2 days… sigh…
Details
Servings
ca. 25 cookies
Prep time
15 minutes
Baking time
15-20 minutes
Difficulty
Easy
Cooling time
2 x 60 minutes
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Ingredients
2 tsp vanilla powder
100g ground walnuts
100g (wheat) flour
100g cold butter
50g caster sugar + extra for dusting
1 pinch of salt
Directions
- Mix vanilla powder, salt and flour really well in a midsized bowl. Add ground walnuts and caster sugar.
- Cut the butter into small-ish flakes and sprinkle atop the flour mix.
(Try to touch it as little as possible with your bare hands, avoiding the butter to melt.) - With a (palette) knife quickly work everything into a shortbread dough.
- Put the dough into a lidded box, e.g. Tupperware, and cool in the fridge for ca. 1 hour. (You can wrap it in foil alternatively, we just prefer to be environmentally friendly as the foil is difficult to reuse afterward because it is all buttery…)
- Take out the cooled dough and work through the next steps quickly so it won’t warm up too much. Cut off segments of the dough and roll them into finger thick and long ‘worms’. Put 1 into each silicone mould, continue until all the dough is used up.
If you are not using a mould, you can cut out shapes with a cookie cutter or make little circles connecting both ends of your finger thick ‘worm’. - Bake the cookies in a pre-heated oven at 150 ºC for ca. 15-20 minutes.
- Take out and leave to cool in form/tray for ca. 1 hour. The cookies will feel soft and squishy at the beginning, so don’t be alarmed, they will harden as they cool off. This is a typical shortbread characteristic.
- When entirely cooled, carefully push out of mould and sift a dash of caster sugar upon each cookie.
Here are the exact things we used:
- Vanilla powder: we used our own from previously scraped, dried & powdered vanilla pods but you can also buy a pot from Jacob Hooy
- Ground walnuts: ours are homegrown, we ground the whole nuts ourselves for the most fragrant result
- Wheat flour: we used Zonnespelt – Biologische Tarwebloem, bought locally at the store of Fruittuin van West
- Butter: we buy ours freshly at Kaasboerderij Captein (no packaged butter can compete with the taste of fresh farm butter…)
- Caster sugar: we buy ours in bulk from the Sligro Forepark, Den Haag
- Salt: we used Jozo met Jodium
- Serving plate: our is made of slate, from Boska
- Silicone mould: we have an older version of this Silikomart Gugelhupf mini, ours differs in that it has 3 different designs, otherwise in size and material it is absolutely the same
- Table runner: made by Fabulously Dutch, alas sold out already…
- Golden cookie plate: Urban Nature, you can buy it at the Bijenkorf
- Highland Moo mug: by the oh-so-talented Hannah Dale of Wrendale Designs, you can buy them at Annemarijn in de Keuken
- Antler spoon: by François Gelb via Betjeman & Barton, The Hague
